Repentance
by Rodwen Fefalas
Summary: Short stories about those who did the main characters wrong in the past.


1.

It began with a letter from Royce King II, one that he started writing on the day the news reached him that his best and last friend, George, had died of unnatural causes. As he'd requested, the information came to him through the landlord, who slipped a folded piece of stationary under his dingy apartment door at nearly four in the morning.

He knew as he sat up, wide awake and shaking, that no one among his social circle would go to sleep that night. Everyone had heard about the murders, and everyone who was still alive would stay up in case they needed to evacuate their homes. Five of Royce's other friends had already died before George, all of their deaths had been less than a month apart, and all of their deaths had followed that of his ex-fiancé.

_Dead, all from unnatural causes. _Royce wasn't stupid. He knew that she had something to do with this. He was just waiting for his chips to fall.

He jumped when he heard the swish of paper sliding under the apartment door. The cold night air drifted in through the open window beside his bed, but it did nothing to freeze the sweat running down his back and face. His beer bottle trembled in his hot hands. Its condensation dripped onto his bare toes where they pressed against the floor, searching for cold spots. His whole body felt like a furnace whose temperature increased at the sight of the stationary.

"Oh god," he whispered, his whole body shaking. He could see the note from where he crouched on the other side of the bed. It fluttered with the slight breeze, seemed to be waving at him. "Oh god, please. Please don't let it be what I think it is."

The knowledge that he didn't even have to get up to know what it said made his breath grow shallow in his chest. Royce rubbed one trembling hand over his face as a tear slipped down his cheek. "Oh god!" he sobbed. "Please! Please don't let it be her! PLEASE! Please don't let her come for me! Oh GOD!"

Royce started sobbing. He could see her face in his mind's eye, her skin cold and smooth, her eyes glowing with hate. He thought about what the papers had said regarding the deaths of his first two friends-about the grisly holes in their neck, their blood streaming down their hair and into the streets-and then pushed those thoughts away. He wouldn't think about that. He wouldn't think about them-dead-or about her killing them. It didn't seem real.

_Then why am I so scared?_

"Oh please!" he sobbed, hiding his face in his hands. The bottle fell to the ground with an empty ping while he let the tears wash over him. After another moment, he got an idea.

Standing up, he crossed to the table sitting two feet from his bed. Sniffling, he pulled the pad of paper from the phone towards him, ignoring the pile of notes that the landlord had written to him about the deaths of his friends, and fixed a pencil in his hand. He wrote, in bold letters, a story he hoped would reconcile his relations with his oncoming murderer:

"Once, there was a beautiful woman named Rosalie who loved a man named Royce. He wasn't kind to her, but she continued to love him anyway because she had a good heart. They both knew he didn't deserve her.

"One day, he woke up from what felt like a very, very long sleep and looked over at her. She slept with her hair flung across the pillow behind her. Even though he knew she was sleeping, part of him wondered: what if she'd died during the night and was only pretending to sleep? Two things hit him then: just how much he loved her, but also just how cruel he was to her. He realized that she deserved someone who loved her as much as she loved, without needing to wait for him to realize how much she was worth first.

"Royce stood up and placed a kiss on her cheek, waking Rosalie. He told her she deserved someone better than him. She agreed. He said that she could go, and within moments, she left.

"A few days later, as he sat upon a park bench, he watched her walk past with a man who had dark hair and kind eyes. Behind them trailed a little girl with flaxen hair who bounced in her dress and spoke to her parents in a high voice. Rosalie caught Royce's eye and nodded to him, but it was clear that she was happy. For a moment, he was happy for her. For a moment, he didn't know greed. For a moment, he'd given her something she'd deserved for as long as she'd known him: true love and a family."

Royce pulled the page from the pad and turned the story over. He wrote:

_"Dear Rosalie,_

_ As I'm nearing the end of my life, I thought I might try to repent. Even if God doesn't forgive me, I hope you can. You, who are so much better than me._

_ Sincerely, Royce"_

He sat back in the chair and then stood up, moving towards the bed. Just as he sat down on the end, the door flew open and there she stood. Her hair was piled on top of her head, her wedding dress hugged her body, and her eyes blazed with anger. All the fear that he'd felt before came charging back and he begged her not to kill him, but she showed him no mercy.

With a snap of his neck, he was dead. A final tear slipped from his eye and hit the floor beside his head with a _pat _sound. A moment later, she found the letter.

Rosalie read both sides of the page before she sighed and tore it up. "You never did act quickly enough when you finally realized you were wrong about things," she told his body as she stuffed the pieces into the oven.


End file.
